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Questions: 1. Rick Santorum, a candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination, claimed that “62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it.” [Source: http://bit.ly/A77XED] What is being explicitly compared here? Is it a longitudinal or cross-sectional comparison? If 62 percent is the “part”, what is the “whole”? 2. Of [...]
In the COMPARABLE framework the “E” is for “Edges”, and part of the “question of edges” is whether there are significant subpopulations. In the case of unemployment of recent college grads, the answer is yes: The center would tell you only that the average unemployment for college grads is about 9%. But the lowest rates [...]
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Read the following comparison: Consumers now owe more on their student loans than their credit cards. Americans owe some $826.5 billion in revolving credit, according to June 2010 figures from the Federal Reserve. (Most of revolving credit is credit-card debt.) Student loans outstanding today — both federal and private — total some $829.785 billion, according to Mark [...]
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Some people say that we couldn’t have known there was a real estate bubble. But quite a few economists pointed out well before the crash that the “price/rent” ratio — that is, the average cost of owning a house/apartment divided by the average cost of renting — was well outside of historical norms. This led economist [...]
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Via http://www.flickr.com/photos/gdsdigital/4963409391/sizes/o/in/photostream/ Click on the graphic to enlarge. IN this graphic, the association is made that the more people were laid off at a company, the bigger the salary. That seems like we are rewarding incompetence! What might be a confounding factor? What should be taken into account to fix the comparison? Hint: ptgaeocfiszeoynmtp If such [...]
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Look at the infographic here: Carbon FootPrint [LARGE VERSION] Questions: 0. Junk Charts Trifecta: What issue is the chart addressing? What does the chart say? What does the data say? (Are they in alignment?) 1. Who is the biggest polluter in raw terms? 2. Who is the biggest polluter per capita? 3. In understanding which [...]
1. Make an exhaustive list of both part-whole comparisons and inter-group comparisons being made here. 2. How are the wholes defined? How are the parts? 3. This is an image, so the links are not clickable. But try and find some of the sources the infographic cites, and list the full names of the studies [...]